How can you implement tradition while remaining original? Many authors have been stuck inside this metaphorical box, and often do not know how they will escape. “Survival” by Margaret Atwood describes what seems to be the traditions of Canadian literature. When it comes to showing said traditions, “The Painted Door” and “Travel Piece” shows the traits “Survival” describes, but they manage to execute them in their own unique way. Both pieces of literature use negative events to advance their stories or even bring them to an end. They also put their characters into situations where they have to survive, though they have different definitions of what survival is. Only one author decides to use the Canadian tradition of making nature …show more content…
“The Painted Door” shows surviving as an attempt to get through an extreme storm. All throughout the story the buildup has to do with the storm, and how it gets worse. The storm gets to a point in the story where the character Steven states”...Across the hills...it would be suicide to try”(pg. 237). Describing the storm being impossible to survive, and telling the reader that John always comes back home, foreshadows that John won’t be making it back alive. John tried to survive a storm so he could return to his wife but ultimately failed. In “The Painted Door”, it displays survival as something that even if you try really hard to succeed, you will eventually fail. “Travel Piece” has a different way of showing and a different mindset about survival. “Travel Piece” paints survival as surviving a crash, and being stranded with other people, with nowhere to go. Our protagonist Annette after the crash becomes stuck in a lifeboat with others, and rescue does not seem to be arriving anytime soon. Near the end of the story, Atwood reveals that the student named Greg drank seawater, causing him to become delusional and try to jump off the boat into the ocean. They manage to pin him down but the realization sets in that “They can’t hold him down forever…”(pg. 293) and that “...he will be lost to them”(pg. 293). With the wording and events shown later, the states that the group on the boat is willing to kill Greg because they know they can’t keep him down forever, and killing him means that they could use him as a food source. To survive, they are willing to kill one of the groups who is going insane. The mindset that is being displayed here is survival by any means necessary. Though it’s confusing on why Sinclair made John go through the storm, “Survival” actually has a reason why this might happen in stories. Atwood stated “Pushing far enough,
How far would someone go to survive? All through life people go through various challenges, but when someone is facing death, how far would someone will they go to save oneself? Survival can mean many different things; such as making it through highschool without getting into trouble, fighting off a predator, or standing up for what is right to help others. In Kindred, Octavia Butler uses many different situations to show what survival means to her. For example, Dana, the main character, travels through time to save her ancestor Rufus thus experiencing times of near death predicaments. In Kindred, Octavia Butler uses the conflicts Dana experiences in her time travels to suggest the idea that people do things they wouldn’t normally
In “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” Rebecca Skloot describes the life of an African American woman named Henrietta Lacks whose “immortal” cells changed both the field of science and her family’s lives forever. When Henrietta Lacks passed away due to cervical cancer at the young age of 31, her family accepted the fact that she was gone forever. However, little did they know that during her treatments, George Gey, a doctor at Johns Hopkins Hospital, took a sample of Henrietta’s cells and named them HeLa in hopes of finding one that multiplied infinitely. Suddenly, worldwide factories began to grow HeLa and began selling them to scientists for testing. During this process, Henrietta’s husband and 5 children had absolutely no idea that Henrietta’s cells were still alive because few knew the actual name of the patient who HeLa came from. Eventually, they found out and were furious at Johns Hopkins and refused to speak to anyone who wanted information on Henrietta. Throughout the book, Rebecca Skloot struggles
In Sherman Alexie’s “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona” and “Dead Men’s Path”, the reader is given a glimpse into two different stories but share many similar characteristics of traditions. Tradition is the handing down of statements, beliefs, legends, customs, information and cultures within a group of people from generation to generation. However, these two stories will reveal that the protagonists in these stories, Michael from “Dead Men’s Path” and Victor from “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona,” will ignore their own traditions that they face throughout the story. In other words, the protagonists are westernized and have forgotten their own culture, which reflects the theory of the melting pot. The ignorance of ancestry and traditions brings the worst fates into the lives of the protagonists in each story.
Timothy O’ Sullivan’s “A Harvest of Death” is a photograph that was taken on July 4th, 1863 where it later was transferred on a 6 ¾” x 8 ¾” albumen silver print by Alexander Gardner and was part of a body of work O’ Sullivan exhibited in his “Grave Testimony: Photographs of the Civil War” exhibition held at the J. Paul Getty Museum.
While we all would agree that racism is immoral and has no place in a modern society, that was not the case in the U.S. in the 1940s. At the time African Americans were treated as second-class citizens, it was made near-impossible for them to vote, and they were discriminated in many ways including in education, socially and in employment. It was a time in which segregation and racism perforated the laws and society, a time in which African Americans were “separate but equal,” segregation was legal and in full force. Apartheid was also everywhere from the books to in society. Blacks were not truly seen as equal as they were seen the the lesser of the two and it very much felt that way. Blacks were oppressed in many ways including having unreachable requirements to vote, such regulations included literacy tests, poll taxes, and elaborate registration systems, but it only started there.
Releasing Rebeca Skloot’s book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, at an earlier date would have changed some things. On the other hand, other thigs would have stayed the same. Certain events would be very different and others would be no so different.
Vancil initiates the criticism of A lesson Before Dying in an old-fashioned, excessive religious genre of attitudes. He claims that Grant Wiggins is reluctant to atonement for guilt to uphold the Christian faith belief system within the Quarters, the small community of Wiggins’ residence. Wiggins has just evolved into the Diaspora of African-American people whose adapted a new way of thought and forever changing lifestyle alterations ranging from the southern to western regions in America. It may not be in complete agreement and acceptance by the matriarchs and patriarchs of the community but it progresses into a unique character identification tool for oneself. Black Americans were unwillingly detached from the true African tribal culture and therefore must attempt to gain a bountiful knowledge on one’s own heritage, current, and future life expectancies for the average home grown man or woman.
The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks highlights how ethically flawed medicine once was and perhaps still is. It tells the devastating story of a woman whose cells were collected and cultured without her consent and its wondrous effect within the medical community as well as the equally distressing effect on her family. Preceding the 50s, scientists, specifically Dr. George Otto Gey have been trying without success to cultivate human cells in laboratories for decades. Henrietta Lacks was an African American tobacco farmer who was diagnosed and eventually succumbed from cervical cancer in 1951. Prior to her treatment, Lacks signed a statement permitting any surgery necessary but Dr. Wharton, before beginning the radium treatment, takes two samples from the unconscious Henrietta without her knowledge; one from her tumor and another from healthy tissue. He then provides Dr. TeLinde with these samples, who in turn delivers them to Dr. Gey. These cancerous, then dubbed, HeLa cells began to grow successfully and Gey began to give samples out to his colleagues, essentially staring a billion dollar industry.
The dialogue a narrator uses with characters in a short story reflects on how the story is being understood by the reader. A character’s dialogue is assumed to be controlled by the author, and then the reader comprehends the dialogue through different points of view in which is told by a narrator. Which point of view the author uses can change how the reader may understand the story. Understanding a story is not just based off the ability to comprehend the plot, setting, characters, and theme. But importantly, understanding what point of view the narrator is in and whether the narrator has dialogue with characters within the story is important. The short story “Lusus Naturae”, written by Margaret Atwood, it’s a short story told by a first person narrator who is a main character in the story but has very minimum dialogue with the other characters. Another short story, “Sonny’s Blues”, written by James Baldwin, is
Have you ever thought about wanting to die early? Well for Ezekiel J Emanuel this is completely the case. In his paper he describes why he doesn’t really want to live past the age of 75 as well as the reasoning and the facts to why living past the age of 75 is detrimental to society as well not really a life at all. Ezekiel is a 60 year old oncologist as well as a bioethicist, so this gives him a bit more credibility as to whether or not he knows what he is talking about. In the article “Why I hope to die at 75” Ezekiel J Emanuel expresses his opinion on why he thinks humans life after 75 is not worth living.
Author Christine Mitchell’s “When Living is a Fate Worse Than Death” told the story of a girl Haitian named Charlotte. Charlotte was born with her brain partially positioned outside of her cranium which had to be removed or she would have not survived. Her skull had to be concealed by a wrap in order not to cause further damage. Charlotte was born with less brain cells which allowed her only to breath and not feel much of the pain. Charlotte’s parents thought that the doctor’s in Haiti did not know what was best for their daughter. The doctors in Haiti thought Charlotte should not be resuscitated, undergo anymore horrible treatments and die peacefully. Charlotte’s parents were not happy with the doctor’s guidelines and thought the United States medical care would have better technology and could save their daughter. Charlotte’s parents bought her a doll which
This article is a good example of how life would be like for a foreigner in a different country. Because the author talks about the Chinese culture, living space and funeral. The author uses a humorous tone to talk about her living in China. This story has great balance between humor and emotions. “The Old Man Isn’t There Anymore”, by Kellie Schmitt tells a beautiful tale of her experience of life in China.
When people ponder death they wonder about the unknown with trepidation. As a young man, William Cullen Bryant wrote the "Thanatopsis." His thoughts progress from the fear of death to the acceptance of the event. People should not fear death because everyone dies and becomes a part of nature.
In the month of March 2016, Women of the World Poetry Slam had Rachel Wiley, a poet and body-positive activist, present her now viral poem called “The Dozens” (Vagianos 2016). This poem was about slams white feminism as a clear indication of whiteness self-defense mechanism. In this poem Wiley included various kinds social events that have occurred in the past years and just to name two: Raven Symone on blackness and Miley Cyrus and Nicki Manji at the VMAs. White feminism continues to become more problematic as the media continues to allow it to be because whiteness makes money; however, intersectionality about race, public imagery, and actual feminism also continues to go viral as the diversity of American become more and more productive.
In the Novel The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, survival becomes the biggest quest to life. The novel is set to be as a scene of isolation and banishment from people and places. The author uses the hidden woods as a set of isolation for the characters, in which creates the suspense of traveling to an unspecified destination near the shore. Cormac McCarthy creates a novel on the depth of an imaginative journey, which leads to a road of intensity and despair. The journey to move forward in an apocalyptic world transforms both of the main characters father and son tremendously as time progress. In particular, the boys’ isolation takes him from hope to torment, making him become fearful and imaginative. The images indicate that McCarthy’s post apocalyptic novel relies on images, particular verbal choices, and truthful evidence to how isolation affected the son emotionally and physically.